"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."
Edmund Burke. What happened on this Day in History?

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

This Day in History: Jul 16, 1935: World's first parking meter installed

The world's first parking meter, known as
Park-O-Meter No. 1, is installed on the southeast corner of what was
then First Street and Robinson Avenue in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on this day in 1935.

The parking meter was the brainchild of a man named Carl C. Magee, who moved to Oklahoma City from New Mexico
in 1927. Magee had a colorful past: As a reporter for an Albuquerque
newspaper, he had played a pivotal role in uncovering the so-called
Teapot Dome Scandal (named for the Teapot Dome oil field in Wyoming), in
which Albert B. Fall, then-secretary of the interior, was convicted of
renting government lands to oil companies in return for personal loans
and gifts. He also wrote a series of articles exposing corruption in the
New Mexico court system, and was tried and acquitted of manslaughter
after he shot at one of the judges targeted in the series during an
altercation at a Las Vegas hotel.

By the time Magee came to Oklahoma City to start a newspaper, the
Oklahoma News, his new hometown shared a common problem with many of
America's urban areas--a lack of sufficient parking space for the
rapidly increasingly number of automobiles
crowding into the downtown business district each day. Asked to find a
solution to the problem, Magee came up with the Park-o-Meter. The first
working model went on public display in early May 1935, inspiring
immediate debate over the pros and cons of coin-regulated parking.
Indignant opponents of the meters considered paying for parking
un-American, as it forced drivers to pay what amounted to a tax on their
cars, depriving them of their money without due process of law.

Despite such opposition, the first meters were installed by the Dual
Parking Meter Company beginning in July 1935; they cost a nickel an
hour, and were placed at 20-foot intervals along the curb that
corresponded to spaces painted on the pavement. Magee's invention caught
on quickly: Retailers loved the meters, as they encouraged a quick
turnover of cars--and potential customers--and drivers were forced to
accept them as a practical necessity for regulating parking. By the
early 1940s, there were more than 140,000 parking meters operating in
the United States. Today, Park-O-Meter No. 1 is on display in the Statehood Gallery of the Oklahoma Historical Society.